asiano Bisticci of Florence, though not nearly all of the many MSS.
of his giving which are at Balliol are Italian-written; a good number
are by Flemish and German scribes. The other men to whom I alluded in
the same connection were for the most part benefactors of Oxford. John
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, beheaded in 1470 for treason, promised a
large gift of books to the University, but they never reached it, nor do
I know a single MS. to-day that was Tiptoft's property, though there can
be no doubt that he was a considerable book-buyer. Humphrey, Duke of
Gloucester (whom we are now forbidden to call "the Good"), did give the
University what was then a large library; his name is inseparably
associated with the great room of the Bodleian, but his books were swept
away in Edward VI.'s days. Some few have come back to their old home,
and others are in London and in Paris: twenty-nine is said to be the
total. He intended further gifts, but he was cut off in 1444, and it is
thought that one collection, perhaps his travelling library, was
diverted to King's College, Cambridge. It is certain that soon after
1450 that college possessed some 174 MSS., among which such titles as
Plato's _Republic_ in Latin and a Greek-English dictionary betray a
humanistic influence which is not likely to have been that of our
founder, Henry VI. Moreover, the only one of those MSS. that remains is
a Latin version of some orations of St. Athanasius, made by a secretary
of the Duke, and dedicated _to_ the Duke; and in the British Museum is
another volume of Athanasius translated by the same man, which actually
has Duke Humphrey's inscription in it. This is respectable evidence in
support of the King's College story.

William Flemming, Dean of Lincoln, and founder of Lincoln College,
Oxford, gave a number of books to that society which show him to have
been interested in the revival of learning; Greek MSS. are among them.

John Gunthorpe, Dean of Wells (d. 1498), is said by Leland to have
bequeathed the large collection he brought from Italy to Jesus College,
Cambridge. It is scattered and gone from there, but books of Gunthorpe's
survive in a good many libraries. One deserves special mention--a Latin
prose version of the Odyssey, which he picked up (not in Italy, though
it is an Italian book, but at Westminster) in 1475. Probably it was the
first copy of the Odyssey in any form that had come to this country
since Roman times, unless, indeed, Archb